Mar 27, 2012

Average cost of U.S. wedding hits $27,021

(Reuters) - New York, where the average cost of a wedding is $65,824, is the most expensive city in the United States to get married but many couples will spend about $27,000 to tie the knot and that doesn't include the cost of the honeymoon.

Most things in Manhattan and the New York metropolitan area are expensive and weddings are no exception, according to the wedding websites TheKnot.com and WeddingChannel.com, which polled nearly 18,000 U.S. brides who were married in 2011 about the cost of their big day.

Chicago came in second with wedding costs of $53,069, but metropolitan New York, which includes Long Island and counties north of New York and the city's boroughs, neighboring New Jersey and Rhode Island rounded out the top five.

The price tags ranged from a high in Manhattan, which topped the poll of 20 cities to Detroit, where couples spend $27,017 on their nuptials.

The state of West Virginia, where nuptials cost an average of $14,203, was the least expensive wedding location.

"For the first time since 2008, wedding budgets are on the rise," said Carley Roney, cofounder of The Knot. "In 2011, one in five U.S. couples spent more than $30,000, and 11 percent spent more than $40,000 on their weddings," she said. ...

I could comment on this and risk getting blasted as an unromantic fuddy-duddy but I will hold my peace. (Is that sublte/diplomatic enough?)